The Easy Way To Faster Mac Browsing (and block annoying ads)

There’s a scourge on planet earth that has taken over the interwebs. It’s called advertising. Some say that ads make the world go ’round. Others say ads pay the freight for nearly everything we buy.

In the last century, technology delivered advertisements to viewers and readers in just a handful of ways. Television and radio commercials. Newspaper and magazine ads. Billboards and direct mail. Did I miss anything? Well, here we are in the 21st century where it’s difficult to escape advertising unless you’re browsing the web. Wait. What?

Ad Tech, Meet User Tech

Advertising proliferated onto the public internet almost as soon as the first GIF image displayed on an ancient Mosaic browser for the Mac. Today, most of the content available on the internet is free thanks to advertising. Here’s the problem. We browse the internet using various technologies which are then used by advertisers to promote their wares and track our whereabouts online.

Instead of attractive but innocuous ads such as you would find in a magazine, advertisers employ modern internet technologies to inundate readers with ads supposedly displayed to specific users based upon their search and browsing habits. That means popup ads, pop-under ads, animated Flash and HTML5 ads, and advertisements that spawn dozens of JavaScript tracking scripts to gather ever more data about your personal online viewing habits.

How effective is all that technology? It’s very effective at annoying those who browse the web, but not as effective as you might think for advertisers. How else can you explain why Mac360 readers– a website obviously about Apple, the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and technology– view ads by window manufacturers, brands of apples, and other completely inappropriate ads for the site?

Thou Shalt Block

Advertisements may pay the freight but they come with weight. A webpage on Mac360 might weigh in at around 250k. That includes the HTML, JavaScript, CSS, a few app images, and the Mac360 logo. Now, let’s add three Google AdSense advertisements, and perhaps a dozen spawned JavaScript trackers and the same page could weigh more than 3-megabytes. That means slower page download, slower page rendering in the browser, and, if you’re on a smartphone, such extra weight results in more bandwidth being used. Just. For. Ads.

How can you defeat that attack?

Enter Adblock Plus and Ghostery, two free Mac browser apps which use technology to give you controls over which advertisements will be used. All. None. Or, some; specifically, those you pick. Allow me to recommend Ghostery over ABP because the controls are simpler, and the popup display of ads and trackers gives you an idea of which websites should be whitelisted to allow an ad or two (that’s how we keep the lights on) and which should be blacklisted because they abuse readers.

Ghostery is a browser extension with nominal settings.

Ghostery’s extension displays ads and trackers in a popup window near the bottom of the webpage in the browser tab. Ghostery also installs a small icon button in Safari’s toolbar. Click it to reveal the controls for that website. Note that Mac360’s ads– all AdSense from Google– can reveal two or three ads, but may display a dozen JavaScript trackers, depending upon the ads displayed at the time and your browsing habits.

Easy peasy, right?

On the other hand, Adblock Plus has more features. It enables complete ad blocking, but also allows acceptable ads that use what is called non-intrusive advertising. Those ads may be displayed by default. Adblock Plus has more controls to disable malware domains, disable social media buttons, disable ad tracking, and more.

Like Ghostery, settings are straightforward and don’t require a learning curve. Install the extension and ads– most of them– disappear from websites you visit, including those annoying Facebook ads.

Ad blocking is changing the face of advertising and how websites are compensated. In recent years, advertisements have become less effective, resulting in lower revenue per ad, and fewer ads clicked by a visitor or reader. The standard model of embedded ads and hidden tracking scripts must change, otherwise many websites with free content will either disappear or be forced to cut back on content, or, worse, be forced to embed advertising as if it was content, and promote products to make money. You see that already on many Apple-oriented websites with affiliate links to Amazon and so-called product ‘specials’ which merely are another form of advertising. That means the content becomes diluted and advertising appears more like embedded content.

Still, if you want to browse faster on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, just use an ad blocker.

Back Up Or Sync Your Mac

Backup and sync your Mac eight ways with ChronoSync. Bootable, mirrored, remote, scheduled, local, iOS storage, and automatic backups. Perform trial syncs before the backup, get email notifications of each sync or backup as they complete, archive and restore.

Samsung vs. Apple

About Jack Miller

I work for a US technology company in Paris, France and switched from Windows PCs to the Mac 20 years ago. My wife said it would improve our marriage, give us more friends, and reduce stress. I guess that two out of three isn't bad. Read more of my articles here.

Reader Interactions

« Next Article

Previous Article »

Primary Sidebar

Search Mac360 »

Move Mac Files Fast

The fastest way to upload and download files from and to your Mac is Yummy FTP Pro. File transfers use a built-in 'turbo' mode for simultaneous connections, with auto reconnect and resume, fully integrated into OS X.

Yummy FTP Pro, the site's sponsor this week, bookmarks, syncs settings between Macs, and syncs files one way and two way mirror; or use drag and drop FTP aliases.